Israel’s government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, received a “series of serious, unprecedented warnings” about an impending deterioration in Israel’s security ahead of the October 7 Hamas massacre, but failed to act on them, opposition leader and Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid said at the start of his testimony in the civilian committee of investigation in Tel Aviv on Thursday.
The committee was formed last month by families of those killed on October 7, representatives from the attacked kibbutzim, and civil society groups. One of the primary goals of the committee composed of legal and security experts, is to initiate the foundation of a state probe, which the political echelon has said will only form once the war is over. The committee has already heard from a number of former ministers and senior security officials.
Lapid began his testimony by laying out key events in the months leading up to the massacre in which it gradually became clear that Israel’s enemies viewed the social unrest over the judicial reforms as an opportunity to attack.Hamas and other jihadist groups have always wanted to attack Israel, but for years knew that they were incapable of doing so. This changed in 2023, Lapid said.
“From mid-2023 onwards, there was a growing number of voices within the terrorist organizations saying the moment they’d been waiting for had arrived. Those voices were noted in intelligence assessments and IDF, Shin Bet, and Mossad deliberations. There were several voices in Israel who said, ‘They have the capability, they have the desire, and now they are identifying the opportunity they have sought for so long,’” Lapid said.
Lapid’s central argument was that while the specific attack on October 7 was a tactical intelligence and operational failure that took Israel by surprise, the intelligence he had been privy to as a former prime minister and leader of the opposition showed unequivocally that Israeli deterrence had eroded due to the social unrest. This alone should have led the government to drop the judicial reform and begin taking military and diplomatic steps to deter an attack from any front.
The judicial reform
Lapid mentioned several key dates in this regard, beginning with the week leading up to the government’s passing of the first judicial reform bill on July 24, 2023. According to Lapid, during this week Netanyahu refused to meet with IDF chief of staff Hertzi Halevi, who wanted to warn him about the dangers Israel may face if the bill passed. Lapid also mentioned that only two ministers from the national security cabinet met with IDF generals who came to the Knesset on the day the bill passed with a similar purpose.
“As someone who served as prime minister of Israel, I can tell you with unequivocal conviction: when the chief of staff of the IDF requests an urgent meeting, you drop everything and meet with him. There cannot and must not be a situation in which such a meeting does not take place immediately, even if you know you might not like what you’re going to hear,” Lapid said.
The opposition leader then described a briefing he had with the prime minister and his military secretary on August 21, 2023. According to Lapid, the secretary described “intensified activity across the board – the Iranians, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the terrorist organizations in Gaza and the West Bank,” and said that “all of these organizations had identified weakness on the Israeli side, internal rifts, tensions and a loss of military preparedness, alongside an emerging diplomatic crisis with the United States.” Lapid said that he considered the information “unambiguous and exceptionally grave,” but said that Netanyahu looked “bored and indifferent.”
Lapid said that during the following weeks, he decided to look at the military intelligence itself and was so concerned that he held a press conference on September 20, less than three weeks before the massacre, in which he warned against an impending disaster. Lapid then proceeded to read out in the entire text of that September 20 conference, including warning that the deteriorating situation may cost human lives, and saying that Netanyahu should be “banging his fists on the desk, bringing his irresponsible ministers into line, and working with the heads of the security forces to calm the tensions on the ground.
“There is a need to differentiate between the fact that there was no specific tactical alert on October 7 about a breach of the border, and the fact that there was a repeated strategic warning about an eruption of violence and loss of deterrence,” Lapid said.
“The prime minister knew that our deterrence had been weakened. He knew that the terrorist organizations were following events in Israeli society with interest. He knew that the cabinet includes people who should never under any circumstances have been allowed anywhere close to the heart of Israel’s national security,” Lapid added.
“Netanyahu knew that he was leading the country to the edge of the abyss, and he decided to take the risk. He prioritized his political considerations over security considerations, and made the most horrific mistake in the history of the State of Israel. This disaster could have been avoided. The murders could have been prevented, the invasion of the towns and villages, the hostages, the rape, the slaughter in the kibbutzim, in Sderot, in Ofakim, and at the Nova Festival, the hundreds of soldiers killed, the evacuation of the North and the collapse of Israeli deterrence. It could have been prevented, and it was not prevented,” Lapid said.
During the question-and-answer part of his testimony, Lapid argued that Netanyahu’s de facto policy since taking office for the second time in 2009 had been to keep Hamas afloat for it to oppose the Palestinian Authority and thus delay the option of moving towards a two-state solution. This policy, which Lapid called a “failed conception,” was to essentially “manage the conflict” without solving it, and one lesson from October 7 was that this cannot work in the long run.
Lapid gave as an example the cash that Netanyahu enabled Qatar to funnel to Hamas. The money was earmarked for poor families, but there was no oversight, Lapid said. After taking office in 2021, the Lapid-Bennett government canceled the cash transfers, in favor of purchasing food vouchers and having the vouchers distributed in the Gaza Strip – thus preventing a constant cash flow to Hamas. This simple step was one of many that Israel should have taken to weaken Hamas, Lapid said.
The opposition leader also said that had he been in power, he would have supported an attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon at the start of the war in order to prevent the current situation of a near-year-long evacuation without an end in sight.
The Likud party responded to Lapid’s testimony, “Yair Lapid is lying again. Prime Minister Netanyahu did not receive any warning about a war in Gaza – not a month before, nor even an hour before October 7. The opposite is true, and the protocols prove it. Lapid, who allowed workers from Gaza in and gave free gas to Nasrallah while promising that it would prevent war, is the last person who can lecture on security matters,” they continued.
In response, Lapid’s party, Yesh Atid, said, “Someone who, on their watch, abandoned the citizens of Israel to their deaths should take responsibility and resign. Netanyahu ignored all the warnings and is doing everything he can to avoid the establishment of a state commission of inquiry so that we don’t see the protocols he is tweeting about.”